Ramanuja

Ramanuja was an Indian Hindu philosopher and theologian, traditionally dated to approximately 1017 to 1137 CE, who became the chief systematizer of the Vishishtadvaita, or "qualified non-dualism," school of Vedanta philosophy. Writing commentaries on core Vedantic texts including the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, he argued against the strict non-dualism associated with the earlier philosopher Adi Shankara, holding instead that the individual soul and the material world are real and genuinely distinct, while still remaining wholly dependent upon and inseparable from the supreme divine reality, which he identified with the god Vishnu. His philosophical framework provided a systematic intellectual foundation for personal, devotional worship of a personal god, in contrast to philosophies that treated ultimate reality as an impersonal, undifferentiated absolute. Ramanuja's teachings became the doctrinal basis of Sri Vaishnavism, one of the major traditions of Hindu devotion to Vishnu, which spread widely across South India under his influence and that of the teachers who followed him, and his synthesis of rigorous philosophy with personal devotion remains one of the most influential currents within later Hindu thought.